Show, Don't Tell

Last Wednesday I had the opportunity to listen to Holocaust survivor Esther Bauer give a talk at UNH and I was able to interview her after. I spent the whole day leading up to it freaking out about what I could possibly ask her. I never imagined that I would ever be able to interview, or even meet, a person who has survived the Holocaust.

Anyways, when the event was over and I had interviewed her, I had 14 pages of notes and it was all great material. I had so much information to work with and I had no idea what to write. I wanted to write a good article for class as well something that my editor would like. I also really wanted to write something that would do Esther justice. After talking to Sandy though I realized that the only person I had to write the article for was myself and the reader. Sandy also told me to show the reader what Esther talked about instead of telling them.

Well that proved to be a lot harder than it first seemed. It took me hours to write this article. My editor texted me multiple times asking if I was almost done and each time I had to tell him that I was still struggling but I would get it to him by the end of the night. I almost had several mental breakdowns while writing it, which may sound dramatic, but it was completely justified. I'm not used to "showing" instead of "telling" and it was really stressing me out. I'd be writing and everything would be fine until I read over a paragraph and realized that I was "telling" for the last few sentences.

When midnight rolled around, I was finally done the article. It was over 1, 200 words, which is just ridiculously long, and I wasn't 100% confident in it. I was still thinking about what my editor would think of it. After receiving a lot of positive feedback from readers though and after re-reading it myself, I'm actually pretty happy with it. I am glad I got to practice showing instead of telling though because I think it's a very interesting and creative way to write an article.